Rooney to share final regular essay on '60 Minutes'

NEW YORK - With 1,096 essays for 60 Minutes under his belt, Andy Rooney will deliver his 1,097th on the upcoming Sunday broadcast - his last as a regular contributor.

NEW YORK — With 1,096 essays for 60 Minutes under his belt, Andy Rooney will deliver his 1,097th on the upcoming Sunday broadcast — his last as a regular contributor.

Rooney, 92, will announce his departure, CBS News announced yesterday, at the end of the program, on which he has been featured since 1978. The statement will be preceded by a segment in which he reviews his career with 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer.

“There’s nobody like Andy, and there never will be,” said Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and executive producer of 60 Minutes.

Calling the contributions of Rooney “immeasurable,” Fager added:

“It’s harder for him to do it every week, but he will always have the ability to speak his mind on 60 Minutes when the urge hits him.”

Rooney began speaking his mind on the newsmagazine in July 1978 with an essay about misleading reporting of automobile fatalities during the Independence Day weekend.

“Car for car,” Rooney contended, “it’s one of the safest weekends of the year to be going someplace.”

In fact, fewer people die of all causes then than at most other times, his research told him.

And, because “Fewer people are watching television over the Fourth,” he added, “I suppose fewer die of boredom.”

At age 59, he became a regular contributor that fall — delivering folksy or peppery observations under the title “A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney.”

Rooney had worked on 60 Minutes since its debut.

During the first season in 1968, he appeared a few times in silhouette with senior producer Palmer Williams in a short-lived segment called “Ipso and Facto.”

Rooney had joined CBS in 1949 as a writer for Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.

He also wrote for the variety show The Garry Moore Show (1959-65) and, at the same time, for CBS public-affairs broadcasts such as Calendar and The Twentieth Century.

He composed his first TV essay, “An Essay on Doors,” in 1964. Continuing the collaboration with CBS correspondent Harry Reasoner as the on-camera narrator, he wrote contemplations on subjects such as chairs, bridges and women.

With An Essay on War, which PBS aired in 1971, Rooney made his first appearance delivering his words.

Yet he valued most his skills as a writer and producer, not as the talking head he became late in life.

“I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn’t realize they thought,” he reflected in a 1998 interview.